New Zealand Flag Referendums Amendment Bill

I want to start, in my first speech in the Committee stage—and I think there will end up being a number of them—focusing on how badly this particular part of the bill is drafted and how embarrassed the Government and the Green Party, if it originally drafted it, should be at how misleading the explanatory note is when compared with what is actually in the bill. We were told by the Prime Minister, and we were told by Gareth Hughes, that the effect of this legislation was to take the current four designs and add one to them. That is not what happens in this legislation. What happens in the bill, as drafted, is that the Order in Council that approved the current four that had been selected and endorsed by the Prime Minister is rescinded, and there is an opportunity for any old five to be included. We are being asked to vote for that today—any old five. The Labour Party, later on in the debate, will be providing the opportunity for there in fact to be six options.

There is a lot of debate going on at the moment about ways of taking the opportunity to improve this bill—not to do what Mr O’Rourke wants to do and put the current flag in there as one of the early options, although that would make a bit of a nonsense of the second referendum on whether you want this one or that one. But the Tino Rangatiratanga flag and the silver fern flag are two that the twitterati think are better options for New Zealand than the Red Peak one.

Can I ask the Minister in the chair, Jo Goodhew, or, by way of interjection, Gareth Hughes, whether this is the Green bill just relabelled? [Interruption] It is the Green bill relabelled. Well, I think we will forgive the Greens to a certain extent for their lack of expertise and their lack of constitutional understanding. But all they had to do was to add one. In fact, if they really wanted Red Peak to be included, they should have said so in the body of the bill. But the Green Party, in doing its drafting—I will be generous and say it is inexperience; I know my colleagues might say something a little bit stronger than that, but we will say it is inexperience. If it wanted to get it right, and if it had consulted with anyone and really just wanted the Red Peak flag added, then what it would have done is give us a bill that added Red Peak. Instead, what the Greens do is they once again scrap the current four and hand over to John Key the power to pick any five that he wants. I just say that it is a degree of naivety, a degree of silliness, and a degree of lack of maturity on the part of the Green Party that I think is causing some problems.

The other important point, and I think it is a pretty vital point and one on which there has been almost no focus, is what the bill does in clause 5(1), amending section 13(1) of the current Act. What that does is replace the 60-day limit for the Order in Council with a 40-day limit. My understanding is that what that does is give the—and before the referendum, so there is about another 2 weeks. There is about another 2 weeks that the country has got to express its opinion as to which five flags should be put before the country. It is a quite important point. The legislation is not adding Red Peak; it is scrapping the four and saying that any old five that Cabinet decides—but then, more important, it says that we have a period of another couple of weeks to decide which five those should be. I know that the National Party does not like it. I know that the Green Party does not like it that much. But in the original cross-party group—I will give credit to New Zealand First members because they saw the con job that John Key was pulling on the country before we did.

I want to apologise to my colleagues. Someone of my experience should know that these cross-party groups, in this sort of approach, are subject to Cabinet coming right over the top, ignoring what was agreed by the group, imposing a panel different from the one that the group wanted, and not—in this particular case the specific amendment I am referring to is the one in my leader’s name, in the name of Andrew Little—taking the view of every single party present at the group when it was discussed. I include the Green Party, the ACT Party, and—what is Peter Dunne’s party called these days?

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: United.

I include the United Future party. All of those parties, and the Labour Party, agreed. All of those parties, and the Labour Party, agreed that there should be a yes/no vote, as there was with the MMP referendum—a yes/no vote. I think that was passed by 85 percent. John Key said: “You know, if people do not know which option it is going to be, people will not vote. They will not know what they are doing.” Well, he was just wrong.

So what we have before the Committee is an amendment on this part of the bill that is in the name of Andrew Little, which would add to the ballot a yes/no question. I do understand from the Green Party that it has done a dirty deal with the National Party and it will not stay with its principles—it had been indicated at earlier stages of the bill and it supports that, and I think that is sad. But I do want to say that the current polling has over 80 percent of New Zealanders wanting to have a yes/no—yes, it does. I cannot tell if he is wobbling or if he is shaking his head. Paul Foster-Bell, the man who has got the Union Jack on his tie, seems not to accept the polling that has been run, including by the New Zealand Herald, showing that about 80 percent of New Zealanders think it is appropriate to have a yes/no vote at the beginning of the process.

All we are saying is that the Labour Party has listened to those people. We talked to them. We did quite a lot of doorknocking on it. We did some surveying on it. It does not matter which part of Hutt South you go to, people say: “Is it not logical”—[Interruption] Sorry?

💬 Brett Hudson: They want Chris Bishop. What they say is they want Chris Bishop.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: They want a new member, that’s what they say. They want a new member.

No, no. In fact, the member over there is chipping in—both members are chipping in while Chris Bishop is up in Ōhāriu knocking on doors because those members both know that as soon as Peter Dunne indicates he is going to retire, then Chris Bishop wants to be the candidate for Ōhāriu. Sorry, Mr Chair, I probably should not have responded to the interjection from Paul Foster-Bell.

What people can see on the second page, on the back page, of the amendment in the name of Andrew Little is a new schedule—a relatively simple schedule. It is one that is not at all complicated, and I want to say, frankly, that it is not that original. I do not want to criticise my leader in terms of his amendment, but the format of it was taken from the MMP referendum. The format of it was taken from the MMP referendum. It is a bit different because under the MMP referendum the ballot in that case was a first-past-the-post ballot. As we know, with MMP it did not really matter whether it was preferential or first post the post, because MMP won it. It would have won the preferential vote on the first ballot because it got more than 50 percent anyway. So in Andrew Little’s amendment on the schedule, which I understand we are referring to because it is—

It is a great honour and a great pleasure to stand up and take a call on behalf of New Zealand First, the only party in real opposition to the debacle of a flag debate that is going on in front of us—here in front of all New Zealanders, of whom 70 percent are now coming out strongly in opposition to the process that is taking place right here in front of us today.

If it took a few people on Facebook to tick a like and to get in behind something—and there are 20,000-odd people in support of it—then surely the groundswell, the tsunami, of support against what is taking place here should be enough for this Government to listen and actually bring this bill back to the House and say: “Let’s scrap this flag referendum altogether.”? I can see the Minister in the chair, the Hon Jo Goodhew, shaking her head like this is some sort of daft idea, but I have to say that this here in Part 1 is all about the interpretation of this bill.

When I look at the opposition that we have had all year long—in fact, for about the last 7 years that this Government has been in Government—there has been opposition to just about everything that the Greens have come out and said, yet today we have heard this remarkable change of opinion, this replacement, because this Government knows that this referendum is in some severe trouble. It is trying to force it down New Zealanders’ throats, to somehow change what we have grown up with, understood, loved, and been supportive of—that is, the New Zealand flag that we are very proud of, which I for one am 100 percent supportive of keeping, and so, too, are all of our New Zealand First members and the New Zealand First Party. It is a crying shame that the support out there to can this referendum—or, at least, to conduct it in a democratic fashion—has been overwhelmingly flipped on its head because this Government understands that with the way it sits, this change has got absolutely no chance of going through.

The Greens have been the patsy of this Government—to be able to pull off their idea of throwing in Red Peak. We have seen some ghastly sorts of alternatives out there in the media and on Google pages already, showing what this Red Peak flag nonsense is going to look like on the world stage. I have to say that Gareth Hughes’s amendment to bring this bill forward to the House and have it absorbed by the Government has some serious concerns, because I can see that, ultimately, the Government members are going to use the Greens to fall on their sword for it, because this referendum will go nowhere. The absolute vast majority of rank and file New Zealanders see this for what it is, and we are not happy with it. Denis O’Rourke, an honourable member from New Zealand First, has got a number of amendments in—some amendments that we will certainly be supporting—and when the debate gets to clauses 1 and 2, we will certainly be speaking to those this evening.

It defies belief really that we have got ourselves into this situation, and we keep using the word “democracy”. From the changing of opinions of the Prime Minister himself, who has been caught on TV3 and TV1 news talking about there being absolutely zero chance of the Red Peak flag being brought in, we have this flip. This complete and utter change at the eleventh hour because of the uncertainty that this flag referendum is going to create creates some concern, because it just goes to show that we cannot trust what is being said out there—that at the toss of a coin or at the flip of a hat, we can actually have a Government turn round and go against something that it had emphatically made clear to the entire country would not come into play.

What is going to stop the Government turning round at the eleventh hour, after the first referendum, and saying: “Actually, we have made our decision. We are not even going to have the second referendum.”? It would not surprise me or the rest of New Zealand that this was the sort of behaviour of a Government that is not following an open and transparent line. It is not following democracy, and this is just another point that proves that very fact. Thank you, I will be taking more calls as the evening goes on.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak on Part 1. I know there are a great deal of other debates this House should be having tonight that are far, far more important than the cloth on the flag, but just because there are more important things we should be discussing, just because we are trying to fix up a bit of a political mess that Parliament has got itself into, does not mean we have to resort to absolute silliness in the debate. In this contribution I would like to address some of the conspiracy theories that we have heard in dealing with Part 1. The first conspiracy by the member Denis O’Rourke is that somehow this Red Peak flag is a Nazi symbol, which I find scurrilous and disgraceful. It is quite incredible that within the second reading of the bill New Zealand First descended to Godwin’s law. In only the second reading it descended to Godwin’s law, which we all know is the marker of not having a particularly good argument.

The second conspiracy theory we have heard tonight is from the Hon Trevor Mallard. We have had this debate. I have raised this point in previous contributions that the Red Peak is not specifically mentioned in, I believe, clauses 4 and 5 because of the constitutional arrangement. We sought expert advice on this and it is improper for this Parliament to instruct the Governor-General on what to do. This is why it is mentioned in the explanatory note. This is the conspiracy theory. Does the honourable member in his assertions believe that somehow the Governor-General is going to pick a different flag? Is he going to pick “Laser Kiwi”? Is he going to pick something else? If this is the message that the honourable member is putting out there, he should just say it.

The honourable member also made some other points. I have got a lot of time for Mr Mallard. He has got an esteemed history in this House, in our political history. Mr Mallard, who I believe was somewhat patronising, described me as naive, silly, and inexperienced in relation to the drafting of this bill. I will admit that this bill was drafted yesterday after our caucus meeting in the morning. It did receive some oversight from the Parliamentary Counsel Office.

I would like to address the three allegations: I am naive, I am silly, and I am inexperienced. It is true, I am naive of the old politics that we see from that member—the politics that saw two parties dig themselves into a political deadlock that has seen the Green Party try to fix it, but not by scoring points. Sure, I may be naive when it comes to scoring political points, but I am not naive when finding constructive solutions to try to break the deadlock. The member called me silly, and it may be true, but perhaps a different definition of “silly” is railing against a bill, the dirty deals that are behind it, and then voting for it.

Thirdly, I might be inexperienced. I am not experienced in the old first-past-the-post politics where deals should be done between only the two big parties. I am not experienced in that and I am proud of it. We were talking that first-past-the-post politics. The honourable member also talked about the twitterati, deprecating the social media campaign that we have heard about in other contributions on this debate.

What this bill does is add a fifth option. This is not because five is a better number than four. We all know exactly why we are here. The fifth option is because of the absolutely phenomenal groundswell of support, which all parties bar one has acknowledged. That is why we are here. We should not be deprecating those people for getting involved in politics, be it on Facebook, be it on Instagram, or be it on Twitter. It is entirely appropriate, entirely legitimate, and I do not think that we should be somehow saying that because it is done in one particular forum it does not have the equal merit of others. In fact, I think, in hindsight, we would not be in this situation. How did the Flag Consideration Panel incorporate new technology? Why on earth could not the public up-vote or down-vote the flags, based on their preference? Why on earth could they not comment on the more than 10,000 submissions, so that perhaps we could have seen a more informed process? This is what alternative flag consideration projects have done, at considerably less cost.

So let us not knock those people for engaging in politics and democracy just because they did it on a phone. Let us give them a choice. Let us make sure that this Parliament acts constructively. Kia ora.

The very defensive National members opposite, who contribute so little to this important debate on a very important issue, have reluctantly continued to contribute very little. But this is an important issue. I want to speak to the amendment in my name, which is about giving the full range of choice to New Zealanders in this referendum. The issue for New Zealand, and indeed the issue for the Government for the last few weeks, has not just been about a fifth option. It has not just been about Red Peak. It has been about a growing disillusionment amongst New Zealanders, about a sense of manipulation, and about a referendum that offers them no real choice at all. That really came to the fore when the Government released the four final candidates, if you like, for alternative flags, which did not provide much choice at all. Three of the four options are virtually identical, apart from a change in colour, and the existence or otherwise of some stars. The fourth option is a koru flag, which is quite different from the others. But out of a long list of 40, and a much longer list even before that, that is all the Government could come up with? And still New Zealanders had not been asked whether or not they even wanted to change the flag.

This amendment is about restoring at least some dignity to the process, giving some dignity to New Zealanders, who just want the courtesy of being asked that question. What could possibly be wrong with asking that question—giving New Zealanders a choice—of whether or not they even want the flag to be changed? That has been the fundamental error of judgment by John Key and his Government. He thought he could just sort of railroad through this process.

💬 Brett Hudson: He’s slow on the uptake, this one.

You see, the problem with the National members opposite is that they will not take to their feet and argue a case. They will barrack and give cheap calls across the House, because they are terrified of the people of New Zealand. They are terrified of giving New Zealanders a real choice and a real say about whether they want to change the flag. That is how scared they are. They are happy to cheer and play along with their leader in their manipulated process because he declared from on high that he wanted a new flag with a silver fern on it. That is not where New Zealanders are at. New Zealanders deserve more respect, and they deserve more courtesy than that.

This is not about any individual politician’s personal choice about the flag. This is about respecting all New Zealanders. When we are asking them to enter into a debate about their emblem, the insignia that represents them around the world, they ought to be treated with respect and dignity. This Government has not done that. Members opposite fail to accept that at their peril. New Zealanders want to be treated with courtesy, and we do that when we give them the choice of answering the question: “Do you want to change the flag, or not?”. New Zealanders do not ask for much, but being treated with courtesy by this House, by members of this House, and by the political process is just one small thing that they ask.

When it comes to such an important choice of what sort of flag we have, then being given that choice to make about whether to change the flag—being asked to make that decision—is absolutely crucial. That is why I have put up this amendment to allow that choice to be added into the process. I was very clear. I offered this to the Government last week, but not as part of some grubby deal that meant we would put up a proposal and make a deal with the Government that we would not vote for New Zealanders to have a real say. We are not into that kind of grubby, backroom deal that others in this House are into. We are into giving New Zealanders the choice about whether to change the flag, as we have right through this process, through the cross-party process, through the input and the submissions we have had at the select committee—every opportunity we have had we have been absolutely consistent about it.

If we are to run a referendum like this, and allow New Zealanders to make a decision on their flag, our national flag, the thing that we stand under, the thing that we hold high when we are on the international stage, and the flag that so many Kiwis wrap round themselves when they at their Anzac Day events in Parliament Square in London, when they are in New York, when they are in Sydney or Melbourne, or wherever they are in the world and they look to the New Zealand flag, we should take this seriously because New Zealanders take it seriously. This is about giving choice and dignity to New Zealanders. New Zealanders deserve nothing less.

I want to just take this opportunity to reply to Minister Parata’s statements around democracy and how important democracy is in this process. The Minister needs to realise that she is speaking about democracy under an urgency process, which makes a farce of this statement in the first place. She is talking about democracy by Facebook, and she is talking about democracy by pandering to lobby groups and focus groups. That is not democracy. If the Minister would dare to stand up in this House and extol the virtues of democracy to New Zealanders—I dare her and her Government to apply the same fine principles of democracy that she would extol to this House to the debate around secret tribunals, which would undermine the sovereignty of this New Zealand Government under investor-State dispute settlements, for example. But to turn specifically to the bill—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes. We do not want to have to talk about those sorts of things. They are not part of Part 1.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I am speaking specifically to the bill, to clauses 4(2) and 5 in Part 1. This Government, with the support of the Green Party, is being—as Minister Joyce would say—tricky. It is being tricky. It is allowing, by Order in Council, the current four flag options to be removed completely. So what it is doing is not adding Red Peak—

💬 Brett Hudson: It was an Order in Council to begin with.

It is removing all four options and then, instead of simply adding Red Peak to this debate, Mr Hudson, it is adding another option. So, actually, what we find is that after this Government puts this legislation through the House, New Zealanders will not necessarily find that they will be discussing the four options already agreed to, and they will not necessarily be discussing Red Peak. What we will discuss, and what we must be mindful of, is that the Prime Minister—

💬 Brett Hudson: Read the commentary, Mr Tabuteau.

Oh, Mr Hudson says: “Read the commentary.” For goodness’ sake! In all of the legislation presented recently you have wonderful song sheets telling us what this bill is about, but then you actually read the legislation and it has nothing whatsoever to do with what you claim it does in the explanatory note. So the reality is, despite Mr Hudson’s commentary, there are now five blank options. What I was saying before I was rudely interrupted was that what we will find is that those five options are not necessarily reflective of a process that the people of New Zealand had thought was a robust and principled one.

💬 Pita Paraone: And would expect.

And would expect. What we find is five blank sheets, where the Prime Minister and Cabinet can fill them in at their own device. New Zealanders need to be very, very wary of that.

I would just like to finish my contribution by speaking to an amendment presented in the name of Denis O’Rourke. It is to rename the piece of legislation to the “New Zealand Flag Referendums (Future Generations Will Not Forgive You) Amendment Act 2015”. I have visited schools in Rotorua as part of my job to discuss Youth Parliament. In those conversations, students asked me what my position was on the flag change. They wanted to know where I stood, and I told them the truth. I love our current flag and I do not want it to change, and I think this whole process has been a farce. And do you know what they said to me? They completely agreed. These are 16-year-olds—16-year-olds from all of the schools in Rotorua—consistently and unanimously agreeing that this whole process is a farce. They were as upset as anyone else about the waste of New Zealand taxpayers’ money on a referendum that does not even ask in the first place: “Do you want a flag change?”. It is an insult to this House and it is a waste of this House’s time. Thank you.

I do want to speak a little bit about Andrew Little’s amendment, which presents the option of having a yes/no vote in the initial referendum. Of course, that is an incredibly sensible idea that could save millions of dollars for the country, and if the public polling that has been consistent right through is right, it would likely see a vote to keep the existing flag and save that money for the country.

It seems a sensible amendment, and I want to speak a little bit about that. But before I do, I have got a couple of other points that I want to make. The first is I want to query Gareth Hughes’ earlier comment about not putting specifics in the bill. It seems a somewhat bizarre thing to say that you should not tell the Governor-General what to do. All of the bills we put through Parliament invite the Governor-General to do what the Parliament has decided is the right thing to happen for New Zealanders. In fact, that is what we do with every bill that goes through the Parliament. So it is a very strange thing for him to say, and I wonder whether, when he takes his next call, he might explain quite how he came to the view that we should not, in the Parliament, any more suggest specific changes in law. It is very hard to understand.

The option presented in this bill is that we have five fresh flag designs. The Hon Trevor Mallard has eloquently articulated—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I wouldn’t say that.

—how that comes to be the case. I am being generous. We are being in the spirit of generosity this evening. John Key’s vanity project here is given a whole new lease of life because it leaves the Prime Minister open to choosing five flag designs that fit his particular criteria. We have already seen that he has a preference for not having designers on the panel. He has expressed great confidence in this panel, which has no people with previous flag design experience, and we have ended up with something that looks a lot more like commercial monikers, I would say, than proper international flags, amongst many of the designs that we are faced with.

I was asked earlier this evening on Back Benches, in the pre-record—and I do not want to spoil the show for those who are hanging out at home—whether I supported the Red Peak flag design. I said: “Look, I honestly have not”—have not—“given it much thought yet. It’s a new thing today.” Who knows what we may have tomorrow? I mean, we are in a position where this changes day by day.

It is a mockery of a process. It is an absolute mockery of a process that really belittles New Zealanders’ engagement in wanting to change our national symbol. We are spending millions and millions of dollars on a process that seems to change day to day, according to the Prime Minister’s polling or political whims, and that cannot be a good process for New Zealanders.

In my view, the right time to have this conversation is when we are debating whether we should become a republic or not. That is the logical time. I think we should be pushing out this debate. In Part 1 there is a way of doing that. We could increase the number of days mentioned in the amended section 13, which talks about 40 days before the commencement of the voting period to change the designs. We could change that to many, many more days, I think, with other tweaks in the amendment.

There will be people who know the subtleties of this process better than me, who would know whether we can push it out there. I am interested to hear from the Minister in the chair, Jo Goodhew, whether she thinks it is technically possible to push it out through that mechanism. Certainly, it would make the law a little bit more difficult to interpret at the other end. We could ask the Governor-General what he thinks of that.

We have come to this point where we are having a debate that changes day by day on what are the options that should represent New Zealanders. That is not the way to unite the country. If we think right back to the start, this was presented to New Zealanders as a way of uniting the country under one flag option. It has done nothing but divide New Zealanders. This process has done nothing but divide New Zealanders. There are way more opinions than flag options. But what is clear is that New Zealanders are not clear on which option they want—in fact, of the new options even. We are leading towards a situation where the vast majority think it is such a shemozzle that they would rather keep the existing flag than vote for any of the options. That is what the polls tell us. Instead of uniting a society in this process, we are paying millions and millions of dollars as a country to divide society. That cannot be the way this should have played out—that cannot be the way. But the Prime Minister has had it as his vanity project, and that has been why we have ended up this way.

I want to speak out about Mr Little’s amendment—a very sensible amendment. [Interruption] Yes, the member is right. The member in the chair obviously made the right call in choosing the Leader of the Opposition when I stood up to compete for a call. This amendment does put the choice back in New Zealanders’ hands. It tries to restore some dignity to a process that has ravaged out of control and has become more about the Prime Minister’s ego. We have seen some very erratic behaviour from the Prime Minister. We have seen him at cancer fund-raisers, asking for people to put their hands up if they are opposed to it and then berating them personally. That cannot be the kind of uniting process that people had in mind when they bought into this process—those who did—at the beginning.

I understand—the Prime Minister now has the flag process hanging around his neck like an albatross. He is now, in many polls, less popular that Prime Minister Helen Clark was when she was thrown out of the Parliament, and he still has a long way to go in his third term. His decline in popularity has been very steep, and he seems to have attached his personal fortunes to a vanity project about choosing the flag. That must be a worrying place. It is a worrying place for the members opposite. They have been very quiet during this debate. We have not had very many calls at all from the National Party members. They seem reluctant to defend it. Of course, the ones we can see are wearing the Union Jack—they are the ones who want to keep the flag process. It is a complete shemozzle on that side of the House.

So this process, which was supposed to unite New Zealand, seems to be dividing us. I would ask the Government to really quickly adopt this sensible suggestion from Andrew Little that puts the choice back into New Zealanders’ hands immediately, about whether they want to change the flag or not. I ask the Government to save the country millions of dollars and spend that money on early childhood education, or on building a new hospital in Dunedin, where it is sorely needed. I ask the Government to spend that money on anything that would help our society get ahead and unite us rather than undertake this process as prescribed in Part 1, which is dividing our country.

I implore the members opposite to please consider voting for the Leader of the Opposition’s amendment, which does give New Zealanders some dignity in the process, gives the Prime Minister perhaps a way out, and allows that money to be spent more wisely than on this process, which has become such an albatross around the Prime Minister’s neck.

We need to have this debate at another time, further down the track, when New Zealanders can be united in the final choice rather than divided. That is the kind of debate that a Labour Government would lead if we were ever to look at changing the flag, because that is the kind of inclusive process that the Labour Party believes in. Going down a track that is about popularity and commercial designs and is rushed and changed every day because of an erratic Prime Minister whose personal fate is tied to the outcome is not the way to go.

Just in case anyone had any possible doubt about this, New Zealand First says this whole referendum process, from beginning to end, is a very bad idea and we should never have embarked upon it in the first place. The nation is effectively being forced into it by John Key’s own orders, and that is the feeling that I get in the community. The community does not really want to go there but is being forced to do so by a Government that wants to distract it from other more important issues. Not only that but several National MPs, a number of them, do not agree with their own party and are in fact being whipped into shape by party discipline, which is making them vote for this bill and indeed the original legislation. That shows just how political this is and how lacking in genuine public support any part of this process actually is.

I now want to particularly refer to the general policy statement in the bill before us. The first thing that I read there is that the New Zealand Flag Referendums Act, the principal Act, is “to provide for 5 alternative flag designs”. Well, why should it be just five? What is magic about five? Indeed, what was magic about the original four? I do not understand why the legislation and why this bill needs to actually prescribe any particular number of alternatives. That is what should have come from the community. If there were enough good designs that would qualify as reasonable alternatives to the New Zealand flag, then that process should have been gone through first before any number was specified in the first flag referendum.

So that is the first problem that it has, and that is one of the things that this Government has been tripped up on, because now we have, instead of four, a fifth one, which some people—not many, I do not think; no groundswell, just a molehill of people—want added as well. Well, it is not a very good process, on that basis.

Secondly, it says in the general policy statement that this flag design is “commonly known as Red Peak”—commonly known as Red Peak? It is not commonly known as any such thing. In fact, this design is not commonly known at all, and I know that because I speak to people in my electorate and around me, and in taxis and so on, and, actually, the fact is that very few people really know what this particular flag is or what it is about. That is the truth. Some people in this Chamber have deluded themselves that there is support for this particular alternative, but in fact there is not. Most people—90 percent of the population—neither know nor care about Red Peak, and that is the truth about that.

That leads me to something else. Further down in the general policy statement we have references to other alternatives, but, in fact, there are no such other alternatives. So this one has just been one out of many other possible alternatives that for some inexplicable reason, based on a tiny little number of people in a poll, many of whom have voted several times—that is the basis. That is the basis upon which this particular design is being included, and that is a very, very poor basis for doing that. It is a very, very poor process.

I will have to say this, and I regret having to say so, but I personally believe that the expert panel actually did not do a very good job in selecting the four alternatives that are there. It is that bad job that has led to this further demand for other alternatives to be put on the ballot paper for the first flag referendum. What is wrong with what the expert panel did is they included a number of designs that are almost identical to each other. That is not very sensible. People needed completely different alternatives if there was to be a genuine choice. That is not what we got with the first four, and that is why we are now faced with this silly process of having to add yet another one—and it should not be. That other one should not have been added.

If there were going to be a process for a wider choice, it would need to be a much better process than this. It would need to be a process that provided genuine alternatives that were not very much like each other. And it would need to provide a process to develop a much larger number of alternatives for people to express an opinion on than merely four.

I want to say something about Gareth Hughes’ comments, because Gareth Hughes was clearly afraid of the truth when he protested that New Zealand First pointed out the similarity in symbolism between the Red Peak design and the use of a very, very similar design and symbolism by Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The simple truth is that in actual fact, as I demonstrated in an earlier speech, there is a very, very close similarity indeed between the actual use of that design on Nazi sentry boxes and the Red Peak flag.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: You’ve turned it upside down.

It was not turned upside down as one person over here says. He is simply not looking at the truth, just in the same way as Gareth Hughes is not prepared to observe the truth—and that is the truth.

In fact, the colours are the same, the design is the same, it looks the same, other people in other parts of the world will point out the similarity, and it will be ridiculed. Those people who say that it is not the same should look at those designs to see the truth in that. That is why New Zealand First pointed it out—because it is a fact. It is not our opinion; it is just a fact.

I want to go on and say this also, if I get enough time. It is this: if we were going to change our flag—and New Zealand First opposes that altogether, but if we were going to do so—there would need to be a much better process than the one that this Government has foisted upon us. This is how I think it should go. First of all, there should be no legislation at all, to begin with. The Government has the ability, without passing legislation, to simply set up focus groups throughout the country, and to say to those focus groups: “Should New Zealand consider a new flag, and if so, what do you think that flag should be?”, and it should take time over doing that—many months, if not years, to do that—because it does take time for that sort of grassroots consultation to take place. As a result of that, you would get a set of criteria that would show you the kinds of things that the general population would like to see in a flag. That would be the first step.

The second step would be to use that criteria, and to have multiple design generators to use it to start designing a flag. The multiple design generators would be, for example, schools, it would be the use of competitions, it would be some paid designers, and it would be many, many other ways of encouraging people to generate ideas about designs. That would also not require legislation at that stage. To follow on from that, you would then need a long period of public discussion on the main alternatives identified by that process. I would foresee that there might be a couple of dozen such designs that would come out of a process like that because people have all sorts of different ideas.

Having done that, and after that public discussion, an expert panel might then be used to help to narrow down those two or three dozen possible designs that could be used, to a referendum. But the first referendum should always ask that question: “Do you, the public of New Zealand, want to even consider a new flag?”. New Zealand First says no, but some people might wish to do so. That is where it should have started.

Never have I seen the potential for strengthening our national identity so squandered. This process has been crassly manipulated by the Government, and by John Key in particular, since its very inception. It has been a distraction from the real issues of the day. It is a personal legacy or vanity project for the Prime Minister, and it is one of the most cynical uses of postmodern communications that I have ever seen.

It must pain the Government that 70 percent of people, when confronted with the four personal choices of the Government’s personal appointees, hate the choices so much that they would rather leave the flag as it is. So the Government has broken the glass and pressed the emergency button, and it has had to swallow a very large, red rat. It is called Red Peak. I personally quite like it, but that is not the issue. The Government knows that without this legislation—which the Greens have helpfully facilitated in a ménage a trois; they now consider themselves virgins—none of the flag options would get up and Mr Key’s personal legacy project would be down the toilet. That is why we are here under urgency—to save the flag project from obscurity.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)